It takes a lot of thought and work to run a journal like this - more than you'd suspect if you haven't seen it done (and at Princeton, which sponsors very few journals, it's not easy to see it done). The press handles production, but professors do the rest of the work - and they do it for love, not money. Four historians serve as editors of the Journal; this year it's my turn to be "primus," which basically means that I give authors our decisions about their articles.
Thanks to the magic of electronic communications - as well as the excellent full-time editor/manager and a terrific graduate assistant in our office at Penn, who keep the traffic moving - we can give most people an answer within three or four months and publish the articles that need the least work within a year of their submission. We believe the quality of our product is high. So do our readers, apparently. Though our print subscriptions have declined in recent years, we are still in four figures - by contrast, most scholarly books sell between 150 and 250 copies these days. And of course, most users now access us through JSTOR, Project Muse and other electronic databases. Their numbers show that we have a substantial readership around the world: Some articles are downloaded several hundred times a year.
Journals like this play a vital role in the humanities. Young scholars typically publish their first work as articles, rather than as books, and we encourage that: In recent years, we have published a number of pieces by graduate students and even the core of an excellent Princeton senior thesis. Those whose work is rejected often find our criticism helpful once they stop fuming. And when a grad student or assistant professor publishes with us, he or she gains the credit, exposure and experience needed to build a career.
Yet we are still spending some of our time this weekend worrying about the future. The practical work of publishing the Journal is very expensive. We pay for our offices. We pay our manager, without whose expert work the whole system would depend on four absent-minded professors, and the decision-making would drag on as it used to. And we pay Penn's press, which produces our handsome final product.
All of this we can do, so long as print subscriptions and electronic aggregators like Project Muse continue providing us with income. More and more of our income comes from electronic media, less and less from the print edition. Over time, we expect, the print edition of the Journal will turn into a few archival copies or disappear entirely. That poses no problem - so long as the electronic edition is preserved and made accessible on stable web sites, and so long as the libraries that subscribe to it pay something.
But there's great pressure around the world now to make all scholarly articles freely accessible - especially those in for-profit journals that charge thousands (which we don't, by the way). Harvard's faculty recently voted to create an open website on which all of their articles will appear. Journal editors who want to publish these professors' work will have to put up with its being freely accessible elsewhere - perhaps even in the handsome form the journal has helped to create. And readers will have the choice, after searching, between reading articles on for-pay sites like Project Muse or reading them for free. Guess which option they'll choose.
None of us wants to stop the flow of good scholarship to the world. But none of us wants to see our journal morph into a blog, either. And that could happen if the open-source trend continues. Magazines and newspapers are starting to realize that they can support at least some of their traditional activities - though hardly all of them - through advertising. But BMW and Dior don't see the readers of the "Journal of the History of Ideas" as a big potential market. If we move to an open-source model, income will fall off - and so will our ability to impose quality control while maintaining efficiency. On this floral May weekend in Philadelphia, as we feel good about what we've accomplished in the past and thank our board members for giving their time and thought to our common enterprise, we also look with some apprehension toward the next few years.
Anthony Grafton is the Henry Putnam University Professor of History. He can be reached at grafton@princeton.edu.
Read More
Why can’t lecturers win the President’s Award for Distinguished Teaching?
Jerry ZhuLet’s acknowledge those who make “boutique teaching” possible, those who work tirelessly to make our rigorous curricula more accessible, and those who dedicate their time to advising and guiding us through all the challenges we face at this University. Lecturers should be eligible for the President’s Award for Distinguished Teaching.
Let’s acknowledge those who make “boutique teaching” possible, those who work tirelessly to make our rigorous curricula more accessible, and those who dedicate their time to advising and guiding us through all the challenges we face at this University. Lecturers should be eligible for the President’s Award for Distinguished Teaching.
Princeton’s administration of justice is Trumpian
Frances BroganThe disparity between the University’s approach to Giberson and its approach to pro-Palestinian protestors reflects a concerning trend of appeasing an increasingly emboldened right rather than resisting the threat it poses to academic freedom and the wellbeing of Princeton students.
Secular Opening Exercises? Don’t throw out the baby with the bath water
Frank StrasburgerThe secular makes no room for the spiritual. What Opening Exercises are meant to convey is the spirit of the institution so that it may be kept alive from generation to generation.
The secular makes no room for the spiritual. What Opening Exercises are meant to convey is the spirit of the institution so that it may be kept alive from generation to generation.
